


Ghosts That We Knew

by SerotoninUp



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Miracle Reveal, No Beta, Pining, Post-Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 04, Prayer, maybe even yearning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerotoninUp/pseuds/SerotoninUp
Summary: Lucifer had never made a habit of prayer, for obvious reasons. Besides the occasional call to the few siblings he knew would answer, it was a pointless endeavor. No one in Heaven was going to listen to him.But perhaps Heaven's miracle would.*not currently updating*
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 53
Kudos: 177





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "Ghosts That We Knew" by Mumford & Sons.  
> 

Lucifer had never made a habit of prayer, for obvious reasons. Besides the occasional call to the few siblings he knew would answer, it was a pointless endeavor.

This had been made perfectly clear millennia ago, when he lay, broken and burned and bleeding, in the center of the vast crater blown into the rocky earth of Hell by his fall. He had reached for his father, for the light of Heaven, a ceaseless stream of invocations falling from his ruined mouth – _please_ and _why_ and _I don’t understand_.

But Heaven wasn’t there, and his Father was silent.

The being that crawled out of the darkness of the pit was not the angel Samael – a weak, pathetic creature that would cry and beg and plead to the Creator who had cast him out. God’s Lightbringer had died when he fell, and his light had died with him. No, the being that crawled out of the darkness of the pit was cold, and ravenous, and bloody _furious_. He was the Lightbringer’s dark mirror. He was Lucifer, the Devil, King of Hell.

And the Devil prayed to no one.

* * *

When he returned to Hell, he dealt with Dromos and the renegade demons ruthlessly and efficiently. Their executions were public, and painful, and terribly, horrifically _slow_. Their corpses moldered on the palace walls, a stark, visible warning of the consequences of disobedience.

Then he visited the loops, tweaking and adjusting where necessary. He spent time in the pits with the worst sinners, taking a perverse joy in giving them the special attention they deserved. He arbitrated disputes among the demons, and played politics, pitting the strongest clans against each other, forcing uneasy alliances, keeping them too occupied with each other to worry about rebellion, although he felt confident that his punishment of Dromos and his followers would be enough of a deterrent for the foreseeable future.

When he wasn't acting the part of the King of Hell, he sat in his throne and thought about Chloe.

He wanted to forget. He wanted to harden himself against his memories. He wanted to purge every soft word and frustrated sigh, every tender glance and exasperated eye-roll, every gentle touch and impossibly sweet kiss from his heart, because the pain of remembering felt too much like the pain of falling, and he had only survived eternity in this place by abandoning that part of himself capable of feeling such despair. He had left it in the pit to die with Samael when he became the Devil.

Until he met the Detective, who had looked past the devil-may-care facade to reveal the vulnerability buried beneath it. She'd found his heart when he didn't even know it existed, and she'd slowly worked her way inside of it. And he'd let her - despite her miraculous origins, despite knowing his father had orchestrated her very existence, despite his overwhelming fear that her feelings and affections were not truly her own.

Despite her betrayal of him.

He'd given her a place in his newfound heart anyway. And then, of his own free will, he'd broken it, and now his heart was a constant, burning ache deep in his chest, as though it had actually shattered and the shards were tearing through his soul, slowly destroying him from the inside out.

Again and again he replayed his last moments with her in his mind. He saw the tears in her eyes, felt the soft skin of her cheeks under his hands and the gentle press of her lips against his. Again and again, he heard her words. _I love you. I love you! Please, don't leave._

_I love you._

* * *

He didn’t know how much time had passed on earth, but it had been about a year in Hell, give or take – without a sun or moon or stars, the passage of time could only be measured by the steady stream of unfortunate souls that poured through the gates.

He hadn’t left his throne in weeks, anchored by the crushing weight of his memories as surely as if he’d been nailed to the stones around him.

He couldn’t forget her. If he could bear to be honest with himself, he didn’t want to forget her. She’d been the brightest light in the darkness of his long existence. He could no more choose to forget her than he could choose to forget the sun and stars.

And maybe... maybe her light was more literal than metaphorical.

He took a shuddering breath at the thought.

Were miracles imbued with the light of Heaven? He wouldn’t know; he’d never performed a miracle even when he was an angel, and certainly not after he fell.

If miracles carried Heaven’s light, as angels did, then he could pray to her. And she would hear him.

He jolted upright, and his muscles protested at the sudden movement after weeks of stillness. Heart pounding, he pressed his palms together and closed his eyes.

All awareness of Hell fell away from him as he focused every iota of his attention on the Detective, seeking, reaching for her...

Something glimmered at the edge of his awareness and he grasped at it desperately.

_Chloe_ , he called, the word small and timid in his mind. _Chloe_. _Can you hear me?_

Silence. A moment passed. Another.

The _something_ fluttered, so faintly he wondered if he’d imagined it. And then it was gone.

The Devil, King of Hell, slumped down in his throne. His expression held only hopelessness.


	2. Chapter 2

Chloe's memories of the first few weeks after Lucifer's departure were a bit of a blur.

They kept her off the Mayan case - dozens of abused corpses, and evidence of some type of satanic ritual, and the sudden disappearance of LA's self-proclaimed Devil all painted a pretty bleak picture in the eyes of the law, as the acting lieutenant bluntly pointed out to her. _Morningstar was your consultant, Detective, and now he's a suspect. You're too close to this to be objective_. And for a while, Lucifer topped the LAPD's list of suspects. If Chloe hadn't been pouring all of her energies into coping with her extensive emotional trauma, she might have fought harder to be included in the case, if only to clear Lucifer's name.

She owed a debt to Amenadiel and Maze; after Amenadiel returned Charlie home safe to Linda, they'd gone back to the Mayan and wiped out all evidence that the five of them had been present that night, including digging the bullets from Chloe's service weapon out of the corpse of Lyla Clayborn. With no proof placing Lucifer at the scene, the LAPD dropped his name from the potential suspect pool, and eventually the entire mess got handed over to the feds.

Chloe used the stress of the case and the worry over her missing partner as an excuse to take some time off. She asked Dan to take Trixie.

And then she spent a week in the penthouse, getting blackout drunk on Lucifer's exceptionally substantial and doubtlessly expensive liquor collection.

She slept in his bed, and took comfort in his lingering scent as she wept all over his luxurious satin sheets. She spent hours in his frankly ridiculous shower, and her tears mixed with the hot water running down her face and into the drain. She curled up on his couch and soaked the Italian leather with her grief. She went out onto the balcony and screamed wordless fury at God, for damning Lucifer to such a terrible existence, and at the Devil, for abandoning her just as she'd finally, _finally_ opened up and given him her heart.

At the end of the week she felt hollow, wrung-out, and exhausted down to her very marrow.

She changed the sheets on the bed. She cleaned the shower and the couch. She stood on the balcony and thought about the last time she had seen him, standing right here in this very spot. The sorrow in his eyes, the determined line of his mouth. His fingertips tracing her cheekbones, a barely-there whisper of skin on skin, as if she might shatter under his touch. His lips against hers, soft and gentle and sweetly desperate.

She locked the balcony doors. She turned off the lights. She took the elevator down to the empty club. She got in her car and picked Trixie up from Dan. She went to work on Monday.

She got on with her life as best she could.

* * *

Three months passed. She didn't have a new partner yet. She'd become something of a pariah in the department yet again - with the whole Palmetto fiasco, and Malcolm coming back from the dead, and his slow descent into madness and escalation to murder before getting shot by Chloe herself, and then Pierce turning out to be a criminal mastermind and _also_ getting killed, and now her suddenly-missing-under-mysterious-circumstances partner, it was just too much. They called her bad luck when she could hear them, and worse things when they thought she couldn't.

At least she had Ella, and Dan - although Dan could do a better job of hiding how pleased he was to have Lucifer gone. _He_ certainly hadn't offered to partner with her, at any rate.

And thus, she was alone in the interrogation room with the prime suspect of her newest case when she heard it. When she heard _him_.

Lucifer, calling her name.

_Chloe. Chloe. Can you hear me?_

Her voice broke off in the middle of a question; she leapt out of her seat as if she'd been struck by lightning. The man across from her flinched. The shit-eating grin that had been plastered on his face the entire time she'd been questioning him was replaced with a slack-jawed gasp and a "What the fuck, lady?"

She didn't acknowledge him. Her eyes darted wildly around the room, and she bolted out the door - and ran headlong into Dan. The pile of files in his hands went flying, pages scattering across the floor.

"Jesus, Chlo!" He nearly lost his balance and reached out to grasp her shoulders, as much to steady himself as to calm her. "Are you okay?"

She couldn't speak past the sudden lump in her throat. Her eyes swept the room. She didn't see him.

"Chloe!" Dan sounded worried. "What is going on?"

"Is he -" her voice caught; she swallowed, a sick, sinking feeling in her stomach. "Is he here?"

"Is he - who, _Lucifer_?" Dan asked incredulously.

She could barely breathe. The lump settled in her gut, sat there like a stone. He wasn't here. But she had heard him. She _knew_ she had.

Dan rubbed her shoulder. His expression softened. Not sympathy, but - 

Pity.

Suddenly, she was breathing _too_ quickly. She brushed his hand away, took a step back.

"Never mind," she bit out, her tone venomous. She retreated back into the interrogation room, slamming the door behind her. The perp jumped, startled, and watched her warily as she resumed her seat across from him.

She knew what she'd heard, no matter how pitiful Dan thought she was.

And as soon as she finally got a confession out of this asshole, she was going to find out exactly what the hell was going on here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As an apology for taking six weeks to update this fic, here’s a chapter that’s longer than the first two chapters combined.

Chloe waited until Dan picked up Trixie on Friday night for their weekend together before reaching out to Linda and Maze.

_I need to talk to you both. Amenadiel too_ , she texted.

The speed of Linda's response surprised Chloe. _Do you want to come over now? We're all here._

_Sure, be right there_ , Chloe responded.

As she drove to Linda's house, she tried to think of how to explain the situation to her friends.

"I'm hearing voices," she said out loud, testing how crazy the words sounded. "Lucifer's voice, specifically. Is that normal?"

Her own voice sounded odd, the words stumbling off her lips to hang awkwardly in the air of the empty car. She laughed at herself, a slightly strangled giggle. "Yeah, I definitely don't sound insane or anything."

She had half a mind to turn the car around and head back home. She didn't want to say those words out loud and have her friends look at her with the same pitying expression that Dan had worn earlier that week.

"You know what?" she said defensively to the vacant seat next to her - a habit she hadn't yet broken, after so many years of Lucifer riding shotgun in her car. "Angels and demons and God and the Devil exist - like, actually, for real exist. Heaven and Hell are real places! People go there when they die! That is way crazier than me hearing Lucifer's voice even though he's not here."

Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

_Chloe. Please. I know you're there._

She flinched, jerking the wheel, nearly colliding with another car before hastily correcting herself. Her heart hammered in her chest; white spots floated on the edges of her vision. She pulled over onto the shoulder, breathing deeply through the sudden surge of adrenaline, ignoring the honks from the angry drivers around her.

That had definitely been him. Lucifer. As clear as if he were sitting right next to her. She turned to stare at the passenger seat, then twisted to check the back seat.

Nothing. No one.

"What the fuck," she whispered, sagging into her seat, suddenly exhausted. She pressed her palms against her eyes, hard enough to see stars exploding against the darkness of her eyelids. "What _is_ this?"

After a minute, her pulse approached something like its normal rhythm. She dropped her hands to the wheel and sighed, guiding the car back onto the road with grim determination. Waiting for her at Linda's house were an angel, a demon, and the Devil's therapist. Surely at least one of them would be able to tell her what was happening.

The rest of the drive passed in blessed silence.

* * *

"You're hearing Lucifer's voice," Linda repeated. She perched on the edge of an overstuffed armchair on the other side of the coffee table. Chloe noted the lines of tension in Linda's posture.

"I'm not crazy," Chloe said immediately. The coffee mug shook in her hand; a tiny splash of hot tea soaked into her jeans. She set the mug down hastily and curled herself more tightly into the corner of the couch.

"No one said you were, Decker," Maze pointed out from the other end of the couch. She held a bag of popcorn in her lap, and crunched enthusiastically as she spoke.

"I feel crazy," Chloe muttered, rubbing her hands over her face. She glanced up at Amenadiel, propped up with his elbow on the back of Linda's chair. "Is this an angel thing?" Her gaze switched to Maze. "A devil thing?"

"Well," said Maze slowly, "It kind of sounds like..." she trailed off, looking over at Amenadiel expectantly.

"Prayer," Amenadiel finished. "Yes, it does."

"Prayer?" Chloe repeated, brows knit in confusion.

"Angels can pray to other angels, and they'll hear each other," Amenadiel explained. "Humans can pray to angels, too. You just won't get a response."

Chloe sat up straight, her heartbeat quickening. "Why not?"

"Divinity," he answered. "It's required in order to receive prayers. Humans don't have any, or at least not enough of it to matter. Although..." his eyes widened as a sudden thought struck him.

The same thought must have occurred to Linda; she looked up at him and placed a cautionary hand on his arm. "She doesn't know yet," Linda said, her voice soft.

"Oh, shit," Maze commented, digging around for another handful of popcorn. "That's right, Decker's still in the dark."

"What are you guys talking about?" Chloe demanded. "What don't I know?"

Maze gestured at Amenadiel, sending a few popcorn kernels flying. "You tell her. You know more about it than we do."

Amenadiel sighed, then nodded, his expression solemn.

"Tell. Me. What." Sick anticipation flooded Chloe’s stomach.

"Chloe," Amenadiel began, "About 40 years ago, our Father sent me to Earth with a mission. I was ordered to perform a miracle – to bless the womb of a woman who was unable to have a child." He paused.

The sick feeling crawled up Chloe’s throat as she considered his words. "Okay, and...?" she choked out.

"The woman was your mother," he said, his tone impossibly gentle. "The miracle was you."

Chloe closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the couch cushion, squeezing until her fingers ached from the tension.

"Why?" she whispered.

Silence descended. Chloe opened her eyes. "Why?" she insisted, looking at each of them in turn.

Maze shrugged, noticeably uncomfortable, popcorn momentarily forgotten as she avoided Chloe’s gaze. Linda bit her lip. Amenadiel sighed, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture.

"I don’t know why," he said. "Our Father didn’t explain himself to me. But from what I understand, his blessing is the reason you’re immune to Lucifer’s powers."

Chloe lips parted on a wordless exhalation; she stared down at the tea stain on her jeans, overwhelmed. Linda rose from her chair and stepped around the coffee table, seating herself on the couch between Chloe and Maze. The doctor took one of Chloe’s hands in her own, her grip reassuring.

"It’s a lot to process," Linda said. "Take your time."

"So... so I was put here -" Chloe struggled to find the right words. "I was put here intentionally, with a specific immunity to Lucifer’s mojo?"

"Yes," Linda said. "And that’s all we know about it," she added quickly.

"And perhaps," Amenadiel mused, "That’s why he can pray to you. You’re a miracle - you have divine origins. Maybe you have just enough divinity in you to hear him."

Chloe shuddered, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the room. "I don’t want to be divine," she said, tugging her hand out of Linda’s grasp to rub away the warning prickle of heat in her eyes. "I just want to be Chloe Decker, normal human."

"Trust me, Decker," Maze interjected, rolling her eyes, "You’re the most normal human in existence. Like, annoyingly, boringly normal."

Against all probability, Maze’s brutal honesty made Chloe laugh; warmth blossomed in her chest, soothing away some of the cold dread.

"Okay," Chloe sighed, leaning back against the couch. "So I’m a miracle put here on Earth with an immunity to Lucifer’s powers - which has all kinds of implications that I really can’t bear to think about right now, honestly - and because of this, I might have just enough divinity in me to hear his prayers."

"An excellent summary," Linda said.

"So what do I do about it?" Chloe asked.

"Pray back to him," Amenadiel suggested.

"Just - pray? It’s that easy?" Chloe repeated, unsure.

"It helps if you do it somewhere without distractions," Amenadiel elaborated. "Someplace quiet, so you can focus. Prayer with the intent to foster two-way communication requires a bit of effort. And you need to address the prayer to your intended recipient."

Chloe cocked her head, somewhat skeptical. "So just go somewhere quiet and think _Lucifer, hello_ really, really hard."

Amenadiel chuckled. "Yes, that should do it."

Chloe nodded slowly. "Okay. In that case, I think I'll go home and try this. Trixie's with Dan, so the house is very quiet right now." Truth be told, the idea of praying to Lucifer in front of people - even her friends - just seemed wrong somehow, like cursing in a church. She stood up. "Thank you all for your help."

She made her way to the front door, Linda following close behind.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Linda asked, her concern written plainly on her face.

Chloe smiled, wan but genuine. "If I have an existential crisis, I'll call you," she promised, opening the door and stepping out onto the stoop.

"Good," the doctor said. "I'll hold you to that."

"Tell Lucifer I said hi," Maze called from the couch.

Chloe shook her head, still smiling, and shut the door behind her.

She drove 10 miles over the speed limit the entire way home.

* * *

It didn't work.

Chloe spent over an hour trying to pray to Lucifer, her frustration mounting as she sent out _Lucifer, Lucifer, are you there?_ over and over again and received nothing but silence in return. The tears that had threatened her at Linda's house had finally spilled down her cheeks after half an hour of repeatedly futile attempts. The tentative hope she'd carried all the way home crumbled under the weight of her failure.

Her head thunked against the headboard as she lifted her eyes to Heaven. A small sob escaped her throat.

"Maybe Maze is right. I'm just a boring human," she whispered. "Maybe I'm not divine enough to talk to an - an angel."

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She picked it up with a listless hand.

She had a text from Linda. _How goes it?_

_It's not working_ , she texted back. Admitting defeat caused fresh tears to well up in her eyes.

_I'm starting it with his name, and it's quiet, and I'm focusing as hard as I can_ , she sent, not waiting for Linda to reply. _I don't know what I'm doing wrong._

The phone rang, the shrill sound echoing loudly in the silence of her bedroom, startling her. The caller ID displayed Linda's name.

"Hello?" Chloe answered tentatively, trying not to sound like she'd spent the last 30 minutes crying.

"Chloe." Linda said earnestly, not bothering with a hello. "I have an idea."

Chloe sniffled, drawing her knees up to her chest, wrapping her free arm around her shins. "Okay."

"You're praying to an angel," Linda said. "And you're supposed to start the prayer with the angel's name."

"That's what I'm doing!" Chloe hissed, her irritation getting the better of her. "It's not working."

Linda carried on, undeterred by Chloe's aggressive response. "Chloe, before Lucifer fell, his name wasn't Lucifer!"

The unexpected revelation sent a bright jolt of hope through Chloe’s heart. "So what was his name?"

"Samael," Linda said. "Try praying to Samael."

"Samael," Chloe repeated, testing the feel of it in her mouth. She pictured Lucifer, such a gentleman with his fancy suits; she remembered his gentle hands, and the way his laughter warmed his brown eyes. She couldn't imagine him as a Samael. "That doesn't suit him at all."

Linda laughed. "I agree. But try it anyway."

"Okay," Chloe whispered, suddenly apprehensive. "I'll let you know if it works."

"Good luck, Chloe."

They hung up, and Chloe tossed the phone back onto the nightstand. She took a deep breath and adjusted her seat, crossing her legs, straightening her spine and folding her hands in her lap.

"Moment of truth," she murmured, closing her eyes, focusing with all her heart on the one person she longed for more than anything else in the world.

And then she prayed.

_Samael. Samael. Are you there?_

Nothing. She held her breath as the moments passed by, as the silence stretched interminably. Her skin prickled, as if caressed by a cool breeze. For a second, her hope wavered.

And then - 

_Detective?_


	4. Chapter 4

The Devil sagged on his throne, high above the jagged stone towers and winding, door-lined corridors of Hell. A fine coating of ash blanketed the wild curls of his hair, the sharp planes of his face, the wrinkled lines of his once-pristine suit. He'd been sitting there for quite some time, despondent, staring at the small bottle in his hand.

It would be so easy, he thought. To open it, to drain its contents down his throat and end all of this.

Chloe's face flitted through his memory. The golden curtain of her hair, sliding over her shoulder. Her smile, so open and genuine, and the subtle hum of her laughter. The gentle touch of her hand. Her caring expression, the concern in her eyes. The softness of her lips.

Lucifer's grip tightened around the bottle. He'd tried, once more, to reach out to her, in a moment of weakness after entering the loop of a woman who looked far too much like his Detective. It was too easy to imagine Chloe there instead, trapped in endless suffering, and Lucifer had panicked, stumbling through the loop door and falling to his knees on the ash-covered ground.

_Chloe. Please. I know you're there,_ he'd begged.

And he'd waited, and waited, desperate for an answer that never came.

He shook his head to suppress the pain of memory and the ache in his heart, then rolled the bottle in his palm and gazed at the clear liquid inside. Its gentle ripples and eddies promised him oblivion—the blessed relief of forgetting.

While he had ample stores of water from the Mnemosyne (it came in handy when torturing the worst of Hell's offenders, ensuring that they never forgot a single moment of any of their terrible deeds), water from the Lethe was extremely rare, difficult to obtain, and hardly necessary when one dealt with guilty souls. After all, those souls didn't come to Hell to forget their sins. They came for punishment.

Did he still deserve punishment?

He'd thought so, for untold eons. And then he'd gone to Earth, and found friendship, and love, and people who believed he deserved both. He'd found a place where he finally fit, and a peace he hadn't felt since the early days in the Silver City. When he was still Samael. Before he rebelled. Before he knew what hate felt like, and how terribly it corrupted a soul.

Hell needed a king. Not some moping creature caught midway between the divine and the infernal, driven to distraction by memories of the life he'd abandoned on Earth. Hell had no use for a ruler with a heart. As long as he clung to this infection in his soul, these damned _feelings_ , he could never be the Devil again, not truly.

Did he want to be the Devil again? Truly?

He clenched his jaw against that thought. What he wanted didn't matter. Hell needed the Devil to keep the demons under control. He needed to keep the Earth and his loved ones safe.

So the Devil he would be.

With a flick of his thumb, Lucifer popped the cork from the bottle's mouth and lifted it to his lips.

_Samael. Samael. Are you there?_

Chloe’s voice rang out in his mind, as clear as if she sat right beside him. The bottle slipped from his hand, clattered against the arm of his throne, and plunged into the darkness below.

_Detective?_

_Lucifer!_ The palpable relief in her voice gripped his heart. _Oh my God, it worked._

She was crying, he realized, and his chest constricted further, overwhelmed by the urge to go to her and console her.

_Chloe,_ he thought, his hands clenching on the arms of his throne, nails digging desperately into the stone. _Don’t cry, love. Please._

_It's really you,_ she sighed, and she made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. _I thought I was going crazy._

_You did hear me,_ he realized. _I thought—you didn’t answer, so I thought—_

_I didn’t understand what was happening,_ she said, her voice steadying. _I asked your brother, and he said to try praying to you._

Lucifer’s stomach gave a little lurch. _To Samael._

_No, that was Linda’s idea,_ Chloe explained. _Praying to Lucifer didn’t work. So she told me your other name. Your angel name._

Lucifer shook his head, lost. Samael was dead, had been dead since the Fall. It didn’t make sense. _I’m not an angel. I'm the Devil._

For a moment, Chloe was silent, and he cursed himself for immediately ruining this tenuous reunion by dragging her into his inner turmoil.

_So you keep saying,_ she finally replied, and he easily visualized the sympathetic half-smile on her face. A memory surfaced, of their conversation on the penthouse balcony after Tiernan's men had broken into his home.

"You're the Devil. But you're also an angel," Chloe had said to him.

When he stood on the stage at the Mayan and banished the demons back to Hell, he'd worn the Devil's face, wielded the Devil's power. But for the first time in millennia, the transformation hadn't been fueled by his own guilt and self-loathing. It had been fueled by love—love for the family he'd found on Earth and his desire to protect them at any cost.

Perhaps he didn't have to choose.

Perhaps Hell _did_ need a king with a heart.

Lucifer found himself suddenly glad that the bottle of Lethe water had fallen.

_Chloe._ He didn't know how to put this feeling into words. He only knew that she'd prevented him from making a terrible mistake. _Thank you._

_For what?_

For saving my life, he didn't say. _For reaching out. For not forgetting me._

_Lucifer._ He thought maybe she was crying again, but despite her quiet tears, he heard the smile in her voice. _Of course I won't forget you. I'm your friend. I love you._

Warmth spread through his chest. _And I you, Chloe._

But a tiny pang of guilt twisted in his gut.

Part of him wanted to cling to her love, to selfishly keep her heart tied to his, if only to ease the crushing loneliness of his self-imposed exile.

But that wasn't fair to Chloe. She deserved far better than he was capable of giving her. She deserved a real partner—someone who brought her coffee every morning, someone who made her laugh, someone to hold her at night.

She certainly didn't deserve a relationship that consisted of nothing more than insubstantial prayers to a ghost from her past.

_Lucifer,_ she said, interrupting his train of thought. The word moved slowly in his mind, almost as if she spoke in her sleep.

_Are you tired, Detective?_

_Mm-hmm_. Her sleepy murmur tugged a small smile from his lips. _Praying is harder than I thought._

Of course, he mused, that small blossom of guilt curling in his stomach once more. The energy required to maintain this connection would undoubtedly exhaust a human much faster than it would a celestial.

_Go to sleep, Chloe,_ he said gently.

_Can I pray to you again?_

A lump swelled in his throat. _Whenever_ _you desire, love._

_Mmkay_. She drifted away, her voice in his head growing faint. _I’ll talk to you soon,_ she promised.

Lucifer felt her presence slip away from his mind, leaving him empty, his heart bereft. He dropped his face into his hands, his breathing harsh and unsteady.

Soon, he knew, he'd have to convince her to move on. She would argue, of course—his stubborn Detective never gave up easily. But she was a woman of logic and reason. She'd see the folly of clinging to a false hope, of pretending they could ever have anything more than this.

“But please, not yet,” he begged in a ragged whisper—to who, he didn’t know. He knew the futility of it even as he said the words, but he threw the prayer out into the void anyway. "Please, let me have this for a little while longer."

He received only silence in return.


End file.
